Don't Look Up did not win an Oscar tonight.  Generally, I don't care about the Oscars but then Will Smith legit slapped Chris Rock so hard that it made the Russo-Ukrainian war stop trending. Then a movie I never heard of won the Oscar.  For all scientists who watched that movie they have to have seen some of themselves in those characters.  I am an astronomer who has literally taken a public stand in opposition to popular anti science movements.   One such movement was against the practice of astronomy and was so effective it convinced a few astronomers that what we do is "colonial".  As if looking up at the sky belongs to one culture or race or nation.    Looking up is the common heritage of everything on Earth that has had eyes.  

What made that movie so cathartic was seeing how much scientists want to yell about what we know. 

Since it seems in a world with so much more colorful, shiny objects and easy undemanding concepts, only a yell will penetrate the noise.  That movie for a moment got ordinary people to see a bit of what it can be like to be a scientist in this regard.  It showed the aspect of what we do, which is communication with the general public, and having to compete with the flashy entertainment media. Then to have people in entertainment really get it may have done enough for physics and literature to qualify.  As we learned in the United States lately, science and scientists have to be understandable and relatable to non scientists, or else our work will fall on deaf ears for many. 

To a scientist it was as cathartic of a primal release as this. 

Will Smith did explain himself in a way.